Consequences
by ncfan
Summary: "She is her father's daughter. He was never really a father at all." Elwing and Eärendil remember their children.
1. Elwing

I own nothing.

* * *

Mad, labyrinthine desire: this is what kept her prisoner. Obsession is a labyrinth, and Elwing knows the twists in the halls all too well. The Halls of Waiting could not be a more effective trap.

_And was I the only one ever to be ensnared by the jewel? _she wonders bitterly, running poor, thin hands over poor, thin wrists as she wanders the stony shores. The pale mauve light of morning laps at her feet. _Was I the only one ever to be ensnared by a Silmaril? Was I the only one ever to throw away things of greater value for a blood-stained bauble?_

She had escaped the destruction of Sirion, escaped those who sought to take what was hers, escaped with all thought driven from her mind. There was only one thing left in Elwing as she flew away—fear. No fear of death. Death meant nothing to Elwing, who loved life not; death might have even been a relief.

Elwing was beyond a fear of death. What she was afraid of, instead, was the theft of her Silmaril. She was afraid of that, afraid of the strange, alien form she had taken without warning. She had been a woman, broken, bleeding, but then she was a great, white bird, flying away from the city. Elwing did not know how her shape had come to change. She did not know why she was flying, or where; she could not stop no matter how her wings (_arms_) ached and she felt that she would fall out of the sky at any moment if she did not rest.

Out of the night after four days, flying without cease, came the shape of Vingilot, white and ghostly in the dark. Elwing's exhaustion was so great that she did not first recognize the one who caught her, but after a while her rescuer's face resolved itself into a familiar form: Eärendil, blue-eyed with a mane of golden hair falling past his shoulders. He did not know her until the morning, when at long last she regained her rightful shape.

Almost immediately, Eärendil began to try to press Elwing to give him the Silmaril. She knew not why he wanted it or what he wanted it for. Eärendil would not say, but that did not matter. Explanation or no, any attempt to divest her of what was hers had Elwing clinging to it more tightly. The Silmaril was _hers, _and no one else could have it. It took months (or was it years?) for Eärendil to wheedle it away from her, and even afterwards Elwing coveted it. She watched him, wearing it at his brow, and plotted plans to get it back that never seemed to go anywhere and never took into account that even if she did recover her jewel, Eärendil would know just who had taken it and would surely take it back.

_It was mine. It was mine, and mine alone. No one else could have it, not even him. I had given it to him only to cease his begging—I thought that surely this would only be a temporary measure._

Setting foot on the Undying Lands had not been enough to give Elwing back independence of mind. She had wanted it back, even then. The recovery of the Silmaril had been first and foremost upon her mind, everything else taking second place. She remembers watching as Vingilot lifted up into the sky.

_It was a wrenching. A wrenching feeling. Like pulling away a scab. Like opening up a great scar. Like reaching down into my chest and ripping out my heart, and refusing to ever let me have it again. It was a part of me—no, that's not right. I was a part of it. I was a part of the Silmaril, an appendage attached to it. The only time I ever felt right was when it was lying against my skin. What was I without it? What was I without that great, terrible jewel?_

_I thought I would drown in darkness without it. That was the only time I ever feared dying, when I thought I would drown in darkness without the Silmaril with me, for sunlight was nothing compared to it. It would be nothing more than a twinkling in the sky, and its loss grieved me more than the loss of my husband._

_I was a part of it. And it was going away. My jewel was leaving me for good. I feared being bereft. I wandered the shores and mourned while the Swan-Elves built my tower. The birds sang me songs of comfort, and I listened naught._

_There I was. I was caught in the belly of a ravening beast, for that was what my obsession was. It was a long and perilous climb I was facing, and I was not strong—I am still not strong, weak, pathetic, scrawny thing. I was facing a climb out of the belly, out of the maw, and into the light of the Sun._

_I was weak, and I was nothing without the Silmaril, I was sure._

_But I did it. But I still made the climb._

_And when I made it out, and stood blinking in the light of the Sun, there was no one there to greet me._

Elwing was free of it. Her flesh was still wasted, and remains wasted still, but the thing that had claimed her mind and her heart since tiny girlhood could claim her no longer. She was amazed at how light she felt, wondered how she had never noticed how heavy she was before, how that jewel around her throat had weighted her down, dragged her down, ever further down and down into the depths. She—

_What have I done?_

Realization hit her as though she had gotten down on her knees, here on this shore, and let a wave crash over her. Realization was a dose of cold water.

_What have I done?_

It still is.

Her knees are weak; they often are. Elwing collapses onto a large rock, pulling her thin white cloak about her and shivering, though whether from an unseasonable chill in the air or something else, she can not say. Fat raindrops hit her hair and her bare arms, or perhaps that's just sea spray. She can never tell, at times like this.

Elwing escaped Sirion, all thought driven from her mind, except to keep that which was hers.

And where are her sons?

Where are her boys, whom she left behind in Sirion?

_How could I… How could I… Where were they in the palace, that day? I don't even know that. I was so intent on what I thought was mine. I forgot about them, about Elros and Elrond. I forgot about them, in favor of a blood-stained bauble._

She knows that they live. The hardiest of birds, who can make the journey across the Belegaer and back, they have brought her this news to soothe her troubled soul. But while Manwë's Eagles are intelligent, the minds of ordinary birds are simple, and their language reflects this. They have words for 'dead' and 'alive' and 'well'. They can compliment and insult, commiserate and gossip—and goodness knows that Elwing has picked up truly salacious gossip from the sea gulls—but they can not do much more than that. Elrond and Elros are alive, but that is all she knows.

Where are they?

What has happened to them?

Ideally, Elwing imagines that her sons have been rescued and sheltered by her own people. She imagines that the Sindar have found them, that they are raising the sons of their Queen. If not that, than they are among the remnants of the Gondolindrim, or even protected by Gil-Galad, the Sindarin-raised High King of the Noldor.

But Elwing has never set much stock by hope. Hope deserted her long ago, whatever they call the Silmaril in the sky now. It is far more likely, she realizes, that her twin boys have been taken hostage by the Enemy. Not by Morgoth. Not even by the Easterlings. Her twin boys have likely been taken hostage by the sons of Fëanor, if they live still, who came to Sirion for their father's creation. Perhaps her sons are well-treated hostages, but they are nothing more than that, and the moment they become inconvenient, they will die.

She abandoned her children and her city, left them to their fates at the hands of the conquerors. _How could I, how could I…_

_How could he?_

Truth is truth. And blood is blood as well, and blood always runs true. Elwing is inevitably brought to mind, in the silence, the miserable silence broken only by crashing waves, of another who chose as she did. Of one who put her in the same position that her sons are in now. Elwing can feel nothing for Dior but ambivalence. She had adored her father as a tiny girl, thought him the bravest, most beautiful, most perfect person she knew, but that does not change truth. Here was one who loved the Silmaril to his death, to his family's deaths, to the ruination of his kingdom. She had loved him, but that does not change the fates of the dead. Elwing is still without Nimloth, without Eluréd and Elurín, without Galathil and Thínloth*. Where are they, the blameless dead? They are dead as the result of one man's obsession.

The Silmarils belong to no one. Elwing knows that now. They are claimed by the earth, the air, the sea, for they are accursed and nothing else will have them. She knows that now. But Dior did not, and she still chose to act as he did, despite remembering all too well the ruination of Doriath and the loss of her whole family, in one fell swoop. She is indeed her father's daughter, and Elwing runs her hands through her hair, wishing that she was not. The family curse of sorts ran true, from Thingol to Lúthien to Dior to her, only growing stronger through the generations until Elwing, little Elwing, daughter and granddaughter and great-granddaughter of those also obsessed with a Silmaril, was devoured wholesale by her passion. She is her father's daughter, and that is why her sons are not with her now.

She is her father's daughter.

Her sons are not with her.

Everyone knows these things.

Well, there's a reason Elwing chose to live in solitude, away from the established cities of Aman.

Whenever she went out into society, Elwing could hear the whispers, feel the stares. Whether imagined or not, condemnation was with her wherever she went. It followed her like Death itself. 'How could a mother abandon her children? How could a mother value a jewel over the lives of her children? How could a mother do such a thing? How could she how could she how could she…" Oh yes, she can hear it, imagined or not. Those words are like knives, and their pierce more deeply than blades ever could.

She thinks she understands.

Dior is tragic because he died.

Elwing is monstrous because she lived.

As if she was the only one ever to be caught fast by the obsession of a fatal jewel. As if she was the only one who ever looked into a Silmaril and was lost.

But Elwing is not a monster. Whatever she and others say of her, she knows she is not a monster. She is just an Elf. She is just a person who was weak, and alone, and lonely, and who loved the image more than the reality. The waking world was a nightmare from which she could never escape, and she preferred oblivion and blindness to wakefulness. Her sons got lost along the way. Whatever else she may be, she is not a monster.

The sea gulls wheel about in the sky above, and they cry down to her 'Time to get up. Time to get up. Day is coming. Time to get up.' Elwing hops to her feet, and brushes her skirt clean of sand. She has duties to attend to.

The Sindar in Aman, released from the Halls of Waiting, who are not content to be ruled by a Kindred of the Eldar flock to her. Thingol resides still in the Halls—those who have been re-embodied hint that it is likely to be a very long time before he is released. No one knows of the fate of Dior; no one can report having seen him in the Halls, but neither do they know if he shares the fate of mortals, to go beyond the circles of the world as his parents did. Elwing was Queen of the Sindar in Middle-Earth, and she is as well in the Undying Lands. They look to her, and she has her duty to them.

A city has sprung up around her tower, small but growing larger with each year. No longer does Elwing live alone, in solitude. Again, she lives among her people.

And if her sons ever come to Aman, if they ever wish to be with her, there will be a place for them here. There must be. There always has been, and she's simply not had the eyes to see it, until now.

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End Note:

1: Galathil is the canonical name of Nimloth's father. Since her mother isn't given a name, I have dubbed her Thínloth.

Eärendil's chapter is up next.


	2. Eärendil

_He asks after them, when first she is well again and able to sit up and talk—several days after landing on Vingilot, as it happens._

"_Elwing," Eärendil presses desperately, "what about our children? Elrond and Elros; what has become of them?"_

_Elwing says nothing, shakes her head and stares out the porthole of the ship. He gives them up for dead, as he must. It seems impossible that they may yet live._

For all gifts, there is a price, for all crimes, there is a punishment, and if there is anything Eärendil has learned, it is that the Valar have prodigious skill at finding punishments that fit the crime, and even greater skill at making a punishment seem like a gift.

The void is lonely, dark and deep.*

The void is silence. The void is solitude. _This is what you wanted, wasn't it? You wanted to find Aman, you wanted the Valar to help your people, you wanted them to give you something to do. And they did. They are. They gave you everything you asked for, except that which you desired in your heart, and did not give voice to._

He had let Elwing choose whether they would be Elves or Men, perhaps out of guilt. No, not perhaps. Definitely out of guilt. Eärendil had not been a good husband, or a good father. He had left them all behind, seeking his own parents in Aman (_And where were Idril and Tuor, when he set foot on the shores of the Undying Lands? He saw them nowhere, they he had sought_). He had left it all to Elwing. Eärendil was sure she could handle it—she was Queen of the Sindar, after all; she had loyal servants and a keen, discerning mind. But that does not change the fact that he left them all behind to fend for themselves. That does not change the fact that disaster befell his family while he was away. So he let Elwing choose.

The Valar would not let the two of them choose separately; they said there had been enough inter-mixing between Elves and Men and that Eärendil and Elwing _must _be of the same kindred. The choice was given first to Eärendil, but he deferred to Elwing, not just out of guilt over his abandonment of his family, but the realization that the only choice Elwing had ever been able to freely make in her life was her decision to marry him. He would not be the instrument that stripped her of all choice, not again. And he knew, instinctively, what Elwing wanted.

If Eärendil could make his choice, freely, without fear of harming his wife, he would choose the Doom of Men. He knew, knew all too well, that there were many among the Edain who saw their short lives as an unnatural state of being, as a curse. Eärendil knew the stories passed down by the Edain; that men were created immortal, the equal of the Elves; that it was the coming of Morgoth to Middle-Earth that had blighted them and shortened their life-spans (There were the whispers, as well, that it was in fact the Elves who were responsible for the diminishment of Men, and that Morgoth could make them whole again). He knew the stories, but Eärendil was not enamored of immortality.

He had been aware of his father Tuor's precipitous mental decline in the final years before his parents left searching for Aman, however much Idril tried to conceal it from her son. Eärendil was around Tuor too often not to notice. He knew that Tuor was beginning to forget, that his mind was starting to slip, that he was young for this to be happening to him, but still, that it was a sign that Tuor was getting old.

One would think that Eärendil, with such an example before him, would wish to escape the ravages of old age and that he would accept immortality gladly. He wouldn't. Eärendil did not relish the idea of living forever, staying the same while the world changed around him, staying the same while his loved ones grow old. The idea of fading horrifies him even more. Perhaps he was struck by some selfish bent, but Eärendil would rather grow old under the eyes of immortal loved ones than the other way around. And what of his sons, lost to him thanks to his absence? How were they counted, as Elves or Men? If the latter, Eärendil did not wish for them to be alone forever beyond the circles of the World.

But he knew which way Elwing would choose, and he had given the choice to her.

Eärendil sails the skies as an immortal Elf, alone for all eternity†. There are the edicts given to him by the Valar. He must sail Vingilot through the sky on a pre-determined course. When the time of need for him comes in the war that is fast approaching, he will be called down, but he must return to the heavens after that. The Valar intend to cast Morgoth beyond the Door of Night; it will be Eärendil's task to keep watch and ensure that he does not escape. He will have custody of the Silmaril that shines upon his brow, and it will be seen in the sky and taken as a beacon of hope by the Children of Ilúvatar.

Ah, the Silmaril.

Eärendil remembers well the day of his wedding to Elwing, the first day he ever beheld the light of the Doriathrin Silmaril. She was wearing it, unhidden, undimmed; it was storming the day they were wed, but as Elwing entered, the crowded chamber filled with gloom was suddenly flooded with light. Her glossy black curls gleamed; her quicksilver eyes glittered; her white skin glowed. She was radiant, set alight, without a doubt the most beautiful person Eärendil had ever seen, a true granddaughter of Lúthien Tinúviel. She had also seemed insubstantial, like a person made of paper with a light shining behind, or an Elf in the initial stages of fading (Though Eärendil had never actually _seen _an Elf fade). Elwing had not seemed properly real to him that day. She never seemed properly real again, not while she wore the Silmaril.

It is a holy jewel, imbued with the light of the Two Trees—Eärendil has been told, by those who saw that light, that to look upon a Silmaril is as close as he will ever come to seeing Telperion and Laurelin in their full glory. This Silmaril is a blessed, lucky thing, but it is drenched in blood as well; it stinks of it. And the things it does to the people who carry it…

Like Elwing, for instance.

After they were wed, and especially after Eärendil began his voyages in search of Aman, Elwing always wore it. The Silmaril could always be found bound fast around her throat in its necklace, either worn openly or beneath one of Elwing's perfumed, gauzy scarves. She said that she didn't feel right unless she was wearing it; her tiny hand would fly to her throat to clutch it in times of stress, and her distress would only grow greater if, by some chance, it was not there. All of this, he shut his eyes and did not respond to. It did not strike Eärendil as alarming; he was not _with _Elwing often enough for him to understand how unnatural her behavior was.

Eärendil only realized that exact depth and nature of Elwing's attachment to her jewel on Vingilot, when he was set with taking it from her. Eärendil still can not say why exactly he wished for Elwing to give him the Silmaril, only that he was struck with the deep conviction that he would never find Aman if he did not have it as his own. This he never confided to Elwing, feeling foolish, but he did ask, and ask again, to infinity it seemed, for her to give the Silmaril to him.

Elwing snarled and refused. Her bony hands clamped down over the jewel, hiding its radiance. She snapped that he would not take what was hers, that he would not steal that which her parents, her brothers, her grandparents and her great-grandfather had all lost their lives for.

"_Are you no better than the Kinslayers, than the ravenous thieves who came to our city and slaughtered our people?! Don't tell me I escaped one group of thieves and murderers just to fall into the arms of another!"_

Even now, the memory chills him. _What a fool I am! _Eärendil rages. _How blind! How could I not have seen what was happening to her? It must have been right in front of my eyes the whole time! How could I not see?_

_Oh, yes. I was not there to see. I was on the Belegaer, chasing after lost parents and hidden lands. And she was in Sirion, becoming this, if she was not this before._

His quiet, listless Elwing had grown harsh and enraged. Her small, frail form crackled with unnatural energy, the sort of which she had never shown herself to be possessed of before. There were times when Eärendil honestly thought that she would leap up and plant her hands on his throat, and he does not care to recall how many months or years it was before he was able to persuade Elwing to even let him hold the Silmaril. Placid she was, until someone suggested that she should relinquish her Silmaril.

How is Elwing now? Is she free of it, of her overwhelming desire and jealousy, or does she wait still for the day when he will come down from the sky, so she can take back what is hers? That is perhaps the only thing that could persuade Eärendil to believe that eternal separation from Elwing is a good thing. At least, if he is up here, the Silmaril can not hurt her.

The Silmaril is a holy jewel. It is blessed and lucky, but it is also fickle and capricious, and it wants to hurt those it touches. It is Eärendil's charge, his duty to let it shine down to the earth far below so that his fellows may have hope. His veins are filled with light; little lights dance back and forth beneath the surface of his skin. The Silmaril is his, and his alone. It will remain his unto the breaking of the world and the breaching of the Door of Night.

And it likes to hurt him.

It knows how to hurt him.

Alone in the silent dark, Eärendil receives flashes of visions of the earth far below. He has never been possessed of foresight; there is no history in either his father or his mother's lines of having visions of things going on far away. It must be the Silmaril's influence. There is no other explanation. He has never received visions or possessed the gift of foresight.

Eärendil has visions. In these visions, he sees two young boys, dark-haired and gray-eyed, fair of face and form. He knows them without ever knowing them. Their names come to him independent of all thought.

Elrond and Elros, his sons.

They're alive, not dead after all. Eärendil's joy at that revelation is short-lived. They are being raised deep in Beleriand, near the borders of Ossiriand and the Taur-im-Duinath, and not by any of the Sindar, or the Gondolindrim. He sees his sons, alive and happy, being raised by another. This one's name comes into his mind the same way the names of his sons did, through a tiny voice in the back of his head.

_Kanafinwë Makalaurë, otherwise known as Maglor, son of the one who created me._

Eärendil's mind is full of fear and fury, jealousy and envy and sorrow. His sons are being raised by another man, may well call another man father. And he who has taken charge of them is dangerous indeed, a Kinslayer thrice over. Who knows when he may turn on two innocent children as he has before? Who knows when he may tire of raising the children of his enemy and kill them? Valuable hostages they might make, but they are not indispensible.

Mostly, Eärendil feels his guilt reach up to overwhelm him again.

He was never really a father at all. He was not in Sirion when his sons were born. He never gave them names; the only names his twin sons bear are the names Elwing gave them. They are Elrond and Elros, as named by Elwing; nameless, by their father. He was not there, when Elwing was succumbing to grief and obsession. He was not there, when his children were growing. He was not there when his city was attacked. If he had been, Elrond and Elros would be with him. They would not be being raised by a notorious Kinslayer, in danger of being killed at any time, even if they did know it. They wouldn't be calling a Kinslayer 'Father.'

But then, Eärendil was never there at all. And now, he never will be.

_The battle rages all around him still. The corpse of Ancalagon the Black still smokes upon the blasted lands of Angband. None of this matters. Eärendil is being inexorably called back up towards the heavens; Vingilot is sailing rapidly higher of its own accord._

_Eärendil stares desperately back towards the ground. "Give my love to my sons!" he shouts, praying that there will be someone to listen, someone who will hear the words, and eventually carries those words to whose whom he lost long ago._

It is silent in the Void, and with every passing year, his bitter loneliness redoubles. Eärendil sails alone through the sky, the silence gathering in his mouth, the light in his veins. With each year, he is less substantial. The Silmaril burns his brow.

* * *

End Notes:

* Okay, I like that line of Robert Frost's _way _too much. I think that's the second time I've used it; I've got to stop.  
† For the purposes of this fic (and for the rest of my fics), the part in _The Silmarillion _about Eärendil coming down from the sky and Elwing flying up to meet him are romantic embellishments.


End file.
